The Roof Tree Part 15

"Bas, we're all frettin' ourselves ter know ther gist of this hyar trouble ... an' I reckon ye're ther fittin' man ter tell us."

The new arrival glanced about the group, nodding in greeting, until his eyes met those of Sim Squires--and to Sim he did not nod. Squires, for his part, had the outward guise of one looking through transparent s.p.a.ce, but Peanuts and Bas exchanged greetings a shade short of cordial, and Peanuts did not rise, though he sat obstructing the steps and the other had to go around him.

"I reckon ye've done heered all I kin tell ye," said Bas, gravely. "I'd done been over ter ther furriner's house some siv'ral times bekase he war a neighbour of mine--an' he seemed a mighty enjoyable sort of body.

He war visitin' at old man Harper's las' night an' I met up with him on ther highway. He'd done told me he'd got a threatenin' letter from somebody thet was skeered ter sign hit, so I proffered ter walk along home with him, an' as we come by ther rock-clift somebody shot two shoots.... I toted him back ter Harper's dwellin' house, an' he's layin'

thar now an' n.o.body don't know yit whether he'll live or die. Thet's all I've got ther power ter tell ye."

"Hed this man Maggard ever been over hyar afore? Did he know ther Harpers when he come?"

Hump Doane still shot out his questions in an inquisitorial manner but Bas met its peremptory edginess with urbanity, though his face was haggard with a night of sleeplessness and fatigue.

"He lowed ter me that his folks hed lived over hyar once a long time back.... Thet's all I knows."

Hump Doane wheeled on the old man, whose life had stretched almost to the century span, and shouted:

"Gran'sire, did ye ever know any Maggards dwellin' over hyar? Thar hain't been none amongst us in my day ner time."

"Maggards ... Maggards?... let me study," quavered the frosty-headed veteran in his palsied falsetto. "I kin remember when ther boys went off ter ther war of Twelve ... I kin remember thet.... Thar war Doanes an'

Rowletts an' Thorntons...."

"I hain't askin' ye erbout no Doanes ner Thorntons. I'm askin' ye war thar any Maggards?"

For a long time the human repository of ancient history pondered, fumbling through the past.

"Let's see--this hyar's ther y'ar one thousand and nine hundred....

Thar's some things I disremembers. Maggards ... Maggards?... I don't remember no Maggards.... No, siree! I don't remember none."

The cripple turned impatiently away, and Bas Rowlett speculatively inquired:

"Does ye reckon mebby he war a-fleein' from some enemy over in Virginny--an' thet ther feller followed atter him an' got him?"

"Seems like we'd hev heered of ther other stranger from some source or other," mused Hump. "Hit hain't none of my business nohow--onless--" the man's voice leaped and cracked with a belligerent violence--"onless. .h.i.t's some of Old Burrell Thornton's feisty kin, done come back ter tek up his wickedness an' plaguery whar he left off at."

Bas Rowlett sat down on an empty box and his shoulders sagged wearily.

"Hit's Old Burrell's house he come ter," he admitted. "But yit he told me he'd done tuck hit fer a debt. I hain't knowed him long, but him an'

me hed got ter be good friends an' ther feller thet shot him come nigh gettin' me, too. Es fer me I'd confidence ther feller ter be all right."

"Ef he dies," commented the deformed cynic, grimly, "I'll confidence him, too--an' ef he lives, I'll be plum willin' ter see him prove hisself up ter be honest. Twell one or t'other of them things comes ter pa.s.s, I hain't got nothin' more ter say."

CHAPTER XI

The room that Dorothy Harper had given over to the wounded man looked off to the front, across valley slope and river--commanding the whole peak and sky-limited picture at whose foreground centre stood the walnut tree.

Uncle Jase came often and as yet he had been able to offer no greater a.s.surance than a doubtful shake of the head. Bas Rowlett, too, never let a day pa.s.s without his broad shadow across the door, and his voice sounding in solicitous inquiry. But Dorothy had a.s.sumed an autocracy in the sick room which allowed no deviations from its decree of uninterrupted rest, and the plotter, approaching behind his mask of friends.h.i.+p, never found himself alone with the wounded man.

Between long periods of fevered coma Cal Maggard opened his eyes weakly and had strength only to smile up at the face above him with its nimbus of bronze set about the heaviness of dark hair--or to spend his scarcely audible words with miserly economy.

Yet as he drifted in the shadowy reaches that lie between life and death it is doubtful whether he suffered. The glow of fever through his drowsiness was rather a grateful warmth, blunted of all responsible thinking, than a recognized affliction, and the realization of the presence near him enveloped him with a languorous contentment.

The sick man could turn his head on his pillow and gaze upward into cool and deep recesses of green where the sun s.h.i.+fted and sifted golden patches of light, and where through branch and twig the stir of summer crooned a restful lullaby. Often a squirrel on a low limb clasped its forepaws on a burgher-fat stomach, and gazed impudently down, chattering excitedly at the invalid. From its hanging nest, with brilliant flashes of orange and jet, a Baltimore oriole came and went about its housekeeping affairs.

As half-consciously and dreamily he gazed up, between sleeping and waking, the life of the tree became for him that of a world in miniature.

But when he heard the door guardedly open and close, he would turn his gaze from that direction as from a minor to a major delight--for then he knew that on the other side of the bed would be the face of Dorothy Harper. "Right smart's goin' ter _dee_pend on how hard he fights hisself," Uncle Jase told Dorothy one day as he took up his hat and saddle-bags. "I reckon ef he feels sartin he's got enough ter live fer--he kin kinderly holp nature along right lavish."

That same day Maggard opened his eyes while the girl was sitting by his bedside.

His smile was less dazzling out of a thin, white face, than it had been through the tan of health, but such as it was he flashed it on her gallantly.

"I don't hone fer nothin' else ter look at--when you're hyar," he a.s.sured her. "But when you _hain't_ hyar I loves ter look at ther old tree."

"Ther old tree," she replied after him, half guiltily; "I've been so worrited, I'd nigh fergot hit."

His smile altered to a steady-eyed seriousness in which, too, she recognized the intangible quality that made him seem to her different from all the other men she had known.

He had been born and lived much as had the men about him. He had been chained to the same hard and dour materialism as they, yet for him life had another essence and dimension, because he had been born with a soul capable of dreams.

"Thet fust night--when I lay a-waitin' fer ye ter come back--an'

mis...o...b..in' whether I'd last thet long," he told her almost under his breath, "seemed like ter me thet old tree war kinderly a-safeguardin'

me."

She bent closer and her lips trembled.

"Mebby hit did safeguard ye, Cal," she whispered. "But I prayed fer ye thet night--I prayed hard fer ye."

The man closed his eyes and his features grew deeply sober.

"I'd love ter know ther pint-blank truth," he said next. "Am I a-goin'

ter live or die?"

She struggled with the catch in her breath and hesitated so long with her hands clenched convulsively together in her lap that he, still lying with lids closed, construed her reticence into a death sentence and spoke again himself.

"Afore I come over hyar," he said, quietly, "I reckon hit wouldn't hev made no great differ ter me nuther way."

"Ye've got a chanst, Cal, and Uncle Jase 'lows," she bent closer and now she could command her voice, "thet ef ye wills ter live ... survigrous strong enough--yore chanst is a better one ... then ef ye ... jist don't keer."

His eyes opened and his lips smiled dubiously.

"I sometimes lays hyar wonderin' whether I truly does keer or not."

"What does ye mean, Cal?"

He paused and lay breathing as though hardly ready to face so vital an issue, then he explained: